We’re Part of Nature

Laura Mauk, writing in this month’s Luxe, observed that our Sentinel Ridge project is “like a piece of thread—one made of wood, metal, glass and plaster—that’s woven into the landscape, joining vineyard terrain to the north and a forested settling to the south.”

The clients said that “we feel like we’re part of nature.” Our approach at Field Architecture is to deeply know that we are part of nature, always. That we are animals living upon the earth and in the earth, that our habitations are fundamentally no different from those of mountain lions, or deer. That perhaps we have a few more tools—those threads of wood, metal, glass and plaster—but that our concerns are deeply natural: shelter, prospect, refuge.

As Mauk described, we created “three simple rectangular forms that display contemporary and agrarian aesthetics and appear as if they’ve grown up out of the intersection between two distinct topographies.” That appearance ties back to all of our work; the thread is both material and conceptual. We weave together buildings and the topography, in a process we call GROUNDSCAPE.